So what’s our vision?
As believers in the saving power of Jesus Christ, we believe our ultimate purpose is clearly defined as loving God with all of our being and to bring glory to His name. Jesus tells us that our foremost command from the book of the Law is to love God with all our heart, soul, and mind. (Mat 22:37) He goes on to share that we are to also love our neighbor as ourselves. These two commands are what following Jesus looks like. The fruit of loving God is that we bring glory to His name. The Apostle Paul tells us in 1Cor:10 that whatever we do we are to do it in such a way that brings glory to the name of God. So our purpose comes from the mouth of Jesus and how we show that purpose is instruction from Paul.
Love God with all our heart and in all we do we bring glory to His name…
So for us, this meant that we were to not fall in love with the things of this world. Material possessions, family, friends, places of work, etc… all have a different perspective when one lives with a God centered perspective. We have spent many years asking God to “show us great things.” We had really good jobs, owned a small business, had a great church family, and have wonderful children. But there is still something missing when it comes to our faith. The things we do and the possessions we own are simply not satisfying and bring very little glory to God. As Christians, totally living for the glory of God, we see that He calls all of us to more than the comfortable American lifestyle. He calls us to wake out of our slumber and stop dumbing down the Gospel to a quick prayer and a way to get out of the threat of hell. Jesus truly calls each and everyone of us to die for Him. That may or may not mean to physically die. But it always means to die to our own fleshly desires and seek Him and His will fully.
We believe it is important to have a vision for what God is doing in your life. As we pray and seek the Lord, we are blessed to have a vision for how God would use us in the lives of the people we encounter throughout the world..
- First and foremost is to share the love of Christ with all we encounter. Jesus said to go into all the world and preach the Gospel to all creation. (Mar 16:15)
- Train up indigenous leaders through Bible study, discipleship, and training. We believe the best way to reach the local culture is to train up men and women to reach out to their own communities.
- Help to provide for basic needs in our community as they arise.
- Share in their suffering. We believe that God desires for us to find joy and contentment in Him in all things. This includes our challenges and difficulties. As we have spent time with many young people, we find a common theme. If they had more money, more worldly resources, then their life would be better. They think that they would be fulfilled and their struggles and suffering would be alleviated. We believe Jesus is enough. That identifying with who you are in Christ and seeking comfort from trials in Him alone is where all of us find our rest.
I would love to say that we are going to do this because we are great Christians and super qualified for this task. But truth be known, we aren’t. We are a couple of ordinary people serving an extra-ordinary Savior. We aren’t educated, we don’t have any letters behind our names. Neither one of us have done more than lead a study and shared a message here and there. But God doesn’t care about all of that. What He seeks after is a willing heart, and that is what we have. We are willing to give up everything for Jesus sake.
Living Daily In Christ
Keith & Lori Carey